Written by Chiara Carter
Professional photography by Safra Levin Photography
Luna, like many pets across South Africa, was a Covid-19 dog, joining our family during the 2020 lockdown. Advertised as a five-month-old Labrador-cross rescue, we first set eyes on her when she was delivered to our Milnerton home by her foster mom. She was a timid scrap of a puppy with a glossy black coat, large pointed ears, long, slender legs and nothing discernibly Lab about her.
She was filled with fear
Timid is an understatement. Luna fled from any sudden movement and spent much of the day cowering under furniture. She even approached a bowl of food with extreme caution, acting as though someone was out to poison her.
We were told Luna had been found as a young pup living alongside cats in dire circumstances. Whether this was true or not, she was something of a cat-dog, padding around graceful and slinky; often aloof, carefully choosing the humans she trusted to get close to her. She was, however, all canine when charging around the garden with our other dogs and soon became the self-appointed household protector, sleeping on the couch with one ear open for any sign of stranger danger.
As Luna gradually learnt to trust us, home became her safe space and she flatly refused to venture far. A behaviourist suggested scattering treats in the garden to lure her into venturing out. But Luna’s fear was far greater than the allure of a reward, even the tastiest titbits of food. Attempts to take her for a walk invariably ended at the street corner where she’d put on brakes and scuttle at top speed back home. If she slipped out the front door, she had a ritual of running round and round the garden, pausing to sniff the pavement in front of the driveway and then rushing down the pathway to wait to be let in at the side gate. Always.
That is until a windy Saturday morning in early November last year…
Luna disappeared
I was sipping a second cup of coffee when I noticed the house was remarkably quiet. Luna had a habit of dancing in circles to remind me it was time for breakfast. That morning our two big dogs, Rosie and Cassius, were lounging around but there was no sign of Luna. We searched the house, garden, garage, outside rooms. We checked the pool. We peered over the boundary walls to survey neighbours’ grounds.
I realised Luna must have slipped out when a visitor left in the early hours of the morning and a door and gate were carelessly left open for a few minutes. It was incredible to us that she wasn’t in the front garden, but she was nowhere to be seen. We began searching up and down the street before fanning out to surrounding roads and a nearby park.
The street where we lived is an oasis of suburban quiet in the midst of some of the busiest parts of central Milnerton. Knowing Luna’s fear of strangers and traffic and her dislike of the beach, we were sure she’d be found in the park or the grounds of the primary school at the end of our road. I nevertheless composed the first of what was to be many social media posts appealing for the community to keep a lookout for a rather generic type dog: black, mixed breed, four years old, on the small side of medium, spayed, white patch on her chest, very pointy ears and a bright pink collar sporting her name tag and my contact details.
That weekend the search party was small: my sister, my two children and me – and the possible places where a dog could hide were many.
On a quest to find Luna
I’d lived in Milnerton for 18 years without thinking about how large greater Milnerton is, not least when one includes Brooklyn and Rugby, which adjoin Milnerton Central, not to mention densely populated Joe Slovo township and Century City. I’d also not realised just how much open land and vlei (wetlands) there is. Over the next two and a half months we’d get to know many of these corners, along with the industrial landscape of neighbouring Paarden Eiland, all too well.
Happily, we weren’t long alone in our search for Luna. Information about the quest to find her was soon circulating in numerous WhatsApp and Facebook groups. Veteran animal rescuer Safra Levin from Rustys Rescue stepped in to set up a “Finding Luna” WhatsApp group that brought together several wonderful people committed to help actively find Luna. Some of them were activists from other animal organisations and many had been involved in other rescues and came with valuable experience.
We contacted the local security companies that patrol the area, put up posters in shops, and enlisted the help of the homeless people who roam the area. We contacted the SPCA, both AACL branches, the 24-hour vets, and several vets in the area in the hope that someone had spotted Luna and handed her in. Although Luna was chipped and the chip registered, meaning if she was brought in as a stray she could be easily identified, I went to the SPCA in Grassy Park and walked past the kennels of sad strays.
Nothing. It seemed Luna had mysteriously vanished into thin air. Nobody had seen her, alive or dead.
I put my scepticism on hold and consulted an animal communicator. The resultant readings said Luna was alone in a grassland area with trees and access to water and described some buildings that could be seen in the background.
The problem was that there were numerous parts of Milnerton and its surrounds that could at a stretch fit this description, including the vast vlei that runs from the border of Milnerton and Rugby alongside Paarden Eiland through to Brooklyn.
Members of the “Find Luna” WhatsApp group jointly and alone repeatedly searched the fringes of this vlei and surrounding roads calling out for Luna, their voices flung back at them by the Southeaster wind that howled through much of November. We even added a voice note of us calling Luna and Cassius barking for those searching to play in the hope that she’d hear and respond.
Another place I searched several times was an area off busy Bosmansdam Road encompassing sports fields owned by Telkom, office parks and hawker stalls leading into Joe Slovo. This was because shortly after Luna disappeared a passenger on a bus reported seeing a medium size, black dog running wildly in traffic on Bosmansdam Road and then turning into the Telkom Park area. I’d gone immediately to the area but nobody had any further information about this dog and I could see no sign of it.
In the ensuing months, several other people reported sighting a dog that possibly resembled Luna in other places and we followed up all these leads but to no avail.
Updated posters, this time advertising a reward for information about Luna’s whereabouts, were produced and put up by volunteers from the group, this time focusing on Brooklyn, Joe Slovo and nearby Phoenix where possible sightings had been reported. Sadly, many of these posters were short-lived, destroyed by the elements or removed by people keen to get the reward themselves. I received some phone calls from con artists claiming knowledge of Luna’s whereabouts, but these claims were palpably false.
An advert in a widely circulated community newspaper elicited responses from some older residents as well as people living further afield, but these too turned out to be dead ends.
No Christmas miracle
Meanwhile, we were busy packing up our family home and getting set to move. I was haunted by the fear that should Luna make her way home, she’d find her front garden much altered, and her family gone. I found myself silently willing Luna to emerge from hiding and show herself to someone who could help but cautioning her to be careful of busy roads.
But there was to be no Christmas miracle and our new home remained quiet and still in the absence of Luna’s shrill warning barks and her wails to be let inside when she found a door closed.
The hard reality was that logic suggested Luna was either dead or stolen. However, Milnerton is the kind of neighbourhood where people notice and post about injured or deceased animals, and although the agency contracted by the Cape Town City Council to collect dead animals doesn’t scan corpses for chips, they’d been told Luna was missing and repeatedly asserted they’d not seen her body.
Knowing how much Luna disliked strangers and how fast she could run – faster than Usain Bolt, my son repeatedly joked – it was difficult to understand how someone could have “dognapped” her or, since she was neither a pedigreed prize dog nor a power breed, why.
While the drive to find Luna eased off over the festive season, she wasn’t forgotten and many in the Luna group and beyond continued to keep a lookout for her and encouraged me not to abandon hope, even though the search felt like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Behind you!
There’d been so many false leads and dead ends that I initially didn’t place much credence in a phone call I received mid-morning on the 15th of January from Amore Olivier about spotting a dog resembling Luna – right down to the pink collar – in the large grounds of the vacant Telkom Park that adjoins the Platinum Junction office park where she worked. She said she’d alert her colleagues to contact me if they spotted the dog again.
My daughter, Lucy, urged me to drive to Milnerton to check this out and we were already on our way when we heard the dog was indeed once more visible. Not only that, but Amore’s colleague, Chad Owen, sent us a photograph. It was undoubtedly Luna.
Chad then sent us a location pin to guide us to Luna and remained on his phone to assist.
The two security officers stationed at the front gate of the Telkom property allowed us entrance after we explained we were looking for our dog, nodding their heads when we said Luna had disappeared in November. They told us just such a dog had been in the grounds since November, but they’d only seen her at night.
With the telephonic guidance of Chad and his colleagues who’d gathered at the fence, Lucy and I began walking though thorny, long grass and thick brush. It was eerily quiet and there was no sign of a dog. We split up to search under a copse of low-growing trees. Aside from a pile of feathers pointing to a slain bird, we saw nothing. Then a group of guinea fowl emerged, running as if disturbed.
The group standing alongside the fence yelled to Lucy: “Behind you! Behind you!”
We turned to look and there she was. Emerging from the scrub, running towards us was an emaciated little black dog with a pink collar. And, being Luna, she hesitated halfway to check the surrounds for danger. I tossed some treats to the ground in front of us and Luna rushed forward, making a choked sobbing sound. And in seconds Luna was next to Lucy, who promptly put on her lead, picked her up and held her safe and tight. The moment felt surreal, as though Luna had materialised from another realm – which, in a sense, she had.
We drove directly to Ixia Street Animal Hospital to have Luna checked. Astonishingly, aside from being seriously malnourished, she was fine. Not dehydrated or ill, no broken bones or battle scars, no visible parasites, not even particularly dirty. All she needed was a slow reintroduction to proper nutrition in the form of five small meals a day of a dog food formulated for delicate stomachs.
Home sweet home
Back home, Luna was greeted warmly by Rosie and tumultuously by Cassius, who wanted some boisterous play with his long-lost playmate.
Ordinarily, Luna would have viewed a new house with deep suspicion, but the circumstances meant she speedily accepted new surroundings. Initially, her voice was raspy, as though she’d not used it for some time, but a week later her bark was back, along with a spring in her step.
It takes a community to rescue a dog, so little wonder that just as we’d been helped and buoyed by the kindness of so many strangers after Luna disappeared, so we were flooded by messages expressing joy she’d been found.
We subsequently learnt that Luna had been spotted by Chad and colleagues in the Telkom grounds last year but at the time looked healthy, and they surmised she came from a nearby house and was allowed to wander. It was only after the festive season break when Chad saw Luna again that he noticed how skeletal she looked and realised something was very wrong. Amore then searched social media and found the posts about her disappearance. Their concern and efforts probably saved Luna’s life.
We don’t know what led Luna to end up five kilometres from home in those grounds at the intersection of two of the busiest roads in Milnerton and can only surmise that she survived on available water and scraps that dried up towards year end. Her innate fearfulness may well have stopped her venturing from her hiding place but at the same time kept her safe from greater harm.
At the time of writing, Luna has been back home for just over a week and is already looking less like a starved dog and more like a too-thin hound. She’s no longer aloof, instead expressing much affection, but in every other way she seems unaltered by her incredible experience, as though her 74 days in the wilderness never happened.
